Title

Author

Date of Award

Access Restriction

Campus Access only research projects

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Systems Engineering

School or College

Seaver College of Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Karen Miller

Abstract

This project develops an approach to guide small entities and startups to use the best in practice systems engineering processes. Currently, there is only one ISOIIEC standard tailored specifically for these small entities: ISO 29110. This ISO standard developed by the INCOSE VSE workgroup tailors the systems life-cycle processes into deployment packages that can be easily implemented into small entities with minimal resources. I am in the process of implementing system engineering best practices through the ISO 29110 standard at my current company, Tribogenics, which is a startup that is currently in need of improved systems life-cycle processes. Tribogenics is beginning to sell its first product, Watson, which is ax-ray source that will do nondestructive material testing. The Watson has already had setbacks caused by numerous rework and redesign. These setbacks are caused because of a lack of understanding of life-cycle management. To improve the product development management at Tribogenics, I have implemented systems engineering projects focusing on key processes taught during my masters program in systems engineering at Loyola Marymount University.

I began by showing the roadmap of initial status of systems engineering tasks, current implemented projects and future processes that follow the guideline of the nine-deployment package listed in the ISO 29110 standard. The VP of Engineering at Tribogenics approved this roadmap and benefits of this project have been clearly shown. The benefits of implementing these systems engineering projects include: reduction of noise of the x-ray detector an order of magnitude, improvement of x-ray source through clear requirement statements, reduction of variation between test stations.from 50% to 8%, improvement of product integration by configuration management, successful handoff of production testing stations, reduction in x-ray calibration through verification and validation and an order of magnitude reduction in data analysis through implementation of change management. Furthermore, many of the current waste in product development, would have been significantly reduced creating a higher customer value product.